A Sharif University researcher with a PhD in Electronic Engineering from the University of Birmingham explains why, amid the US and Israeli war on Iran, people not only refused to leave—but many Iranians around the world actually returned home.
The Night Everything Changed
It was 3 AM on March 17 when the bombs landed near my house. The night before, I had brought three newborn kittens inside because of the cold rain. The explosion threw me out of bed. I didn’t decide to scream—my body did it on its own. As I ran toward the doorframe, searching for the kittens, my bedroom window shook so violently that the handle broke off.
During 18 days of war, bombs had fallen near us before. Each time, I would whisper the Shahada under my breath and think, “What can I do?”—then return to my tea, my book, or trying to sleep. But this time was different. It felt like an earthquake that exploded. I was certain they had hit the neighbor’s house and we were next.
I Wasn’t Alone
Months after the genocide in Gaza began, I knew Israel would come for Iran too. I had seen the maps of so-called “Greater Israel.” Returning from shopping one day, I looked at my neighborhood—where I grew up, lived for 30 years, and shared so many memories with my mother—and told myself: “If war comes, no matter where I am in the world, I will return to Iran.”
After that night of bombs and shattered glass, when I again decided not to leave, I had to ask myself “Why?” That’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. Iranian families were returning from Turkey, Germany, and America. Not young men called to the front lines—ordinary people: middle-aged couples, families pulling their children out of foreign schools to come home to a country under bombardment.
When the marches in Tehran and Isfahan were bombed, people didn’t flee. They shouted “Allahu Akbar” louder. I saw a photo of a woman with a bomb landing near her—she didn’t even turn her head, her eyes fixed on the Quran.
A Different Way of Seeing
Western psychology has an answer for people like me. It says I’m grieving my mother’s loss, suffering from PTSD, and “frozen” in place. From their perspective, the rational choice is to flee. These theories, developed in a Western context, make logical sense—but I was raised differently: with Persian poetry and Iranian mysticism; with Fereydoun Moshiri’s “Roots in the Soil”; with Sohrab Sepehri’s way of seeing life. I understand the Western view, but I don’t feel it.
A Powerful Faith
When a bomb falls beside us, we don’t necessarily collapse. A powerful faith holds us up. We need serious psychological, sociological, and philosophical research from an Eastern perspective. But until such research exists, all I can say is this: 23 years ago, when news of the American invasion of Iraq played on television, my mother’s eyes filled with tears.
She told me: “You’re still a child. You don’t yet know what homeland means.” She was crying for Iraq—the same Iraq that had fought us for eight years. She had raised children born amid bombings, children she tried to save from explosions. But she knew the American attack would bring no good to the Iraqi people.
My mother taught me what it means to love your homeland. Even when she was sick and suffering, she voted in every election—because she knew the right to vote wasn’t given to us easily and shouldn’t be given up easily. She believed in change through the ballot box, not through war and killing.
A Shared Love
Since the genocide in Gaza began, I saw images of Israeli soldiers desecrating Palestinian cemeteries. They showed no mercy even to the dead—dismembering bodies and returning them to families unrecognizable. All I could think about was my mother’s grave. I realized I would give my life to prevent anyone from disrespecting her bones.
That old Palestinian man made me understand how similar we are. How precious our lost loved ones remain. How much we love our land because our loved ones rest in it. Perhaps this shared love for land and the departed is why Iranians feel such deep solidarity with Palestinians. We recognize something in them. A love that doesn’t calculate risk. A love that says: “Stay here, not anywhere else. Even if the bombs fall.”
Love Beyond Reason
We are in a ceasefire now. But they will likely attack us again. Maybe in the next bombing, I won’t survive. But I know this: I am not dissatisfied with life in Iran—with all its hardships, all the wars and sanctions I’ve experienced since birth. I wouldn’t have wanted to be born anywhere else. Perhaps beautiful Palestine would also have been a good place to be born.
I once thought to myself: I am ready to die for Iran, with all the suffering I’ve endured in this life. In that moment, I understood that there is no rational explanation for this feeling. You can only call it love. Because it makes no sense at all. Iran taught me what love is. So if I die tomorrow, I have lived a good life.
From: sadidkhabar